Ancient Recipe: How To Hack Your Olive Oil Into An Aromatic Infusion

Starting from today, we will be starting a new series of recipes and food wisdom, derived directly from the Ancient World – from ancient Greece to Italy, Spain and Middle East, once per month we will be writing about what the ancient civilisations wrote about food and their food culture.

I was reading a book called “Deipnosophistae” (too Greek for you?) freely translated as Dinner Philosophers/Sophists/Experts (according to Wikipedia).

This book, written by Authenaus of Naucratis and describes how the ancient Greeks were celebrating food, gathering around the table and talking about philosophy for hours (today most modern families gather around – if all- and watch TV for hours)

I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the recipes that we still use today, are mentioned in this book, 3,000 years ago.

This recipe is so simple, I am just puzzled why not many people know about it and buy a ready made product rather than making their own with pure ingredients.

So today I will present you a simple “hack” of transforming your extra virgin olive oil into an infused one, that will be highly aromatic.

Fill a bowl or a bottle with as much olive oil you need. In our case, we just need a few, just to use it for marinating chicken in a couple of days later.

Then, simply add the rosemary (around 3 teaspoons per 500ml) and stir well with a spoon.

An alternative method: rather using a bowl, like I did, get a small bottle of olive oil and drop inside the rosemary leaves. This will ensure that you will have the infused olive oil for much longer period.

And that’s pretty much it. Ancient wisdom, still used today.

Olive oil vessels called “Amphora” used to store and transport olive oil in ancient Greece.

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